Determinants of Health Insurance Uptake Among Informal Sector Workers: a Case of National Health Insurance Fund Program at Kenyatta Market, Kibra Sub-county, Kenya

Abstract

Health financing is a problem globally. To attain coverage of health universally, countries have adapted the insurance option which guarantees that an individual will be guaranteed quality healthcare any time. The rate at which people take up health insurance in many countries is quite low, particularly in Africa and East Asia. In Kenya, the National Health Insurance has been lowly taken up by employees involved in the informal economy, this has been credited to a host of factors. This research assessed the influence of education level, income level, marital status, and religious affiliations on the rate at which the National Health Insurance is taken up by informal sector employees in Kenyatta market. Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs and Planned behaviour theory were anchors for the study. Research design of descriptive nature was used. The study targeted all the 608 informal workers at Kenyatta market. A sample of 241 respondents was chosen from the different strata identified based on a simple random sampling technique. Piloting of the research instruments was done in Toi market that is located in Kibra sub-county and shares similar characteristics in terms of respondents. Instruments validity was checked by experts in the field while Cronbach alpha coefficient was used in checking reliability. The analysis indicated that 64.4% of the sampled respondents had enrolled in NHIF scheme and 35.6% had not despite government policy that every Kenyan 18 years and above must enrol for NHIF. In addition, based on the binary logistic regression, it was found that education and income were positive significant predictors of NHIF uptake, religious affiliations have a negative influence on uptake of NHIF, and marital status was not significant predictor of uptake of NHIF. This research is anticipated to have an immense influence on the field of project management, particularly concerning health projects financing.